Francis Bacon

Anglo-Irish painter, atheist, gambler and bon vivant.

Francis Bacon outside Tate Britain, 1985

Minihan on Francis Bacon

"I first met Francis Bacon outside the Marlborough Magistrate's court in 1971. The artist had been acquitted on drug charges. In his defence, he told the magistrates `that he could not have smoked cannabis found in his home because he was asthmatic'. Over the next 20 years I photographed Bacon in London, and at his invitation, in Paris for his show at the Clause Bernard Gallery, in 1977. Bacon was courteous to those who knew him, and respected photography, which is the salient influence in much of his work. In the early 70s when Bacon was at the height of his fame, his most important collaboration was with the photographer John Deakin. Bacon loved looking at books about photography, notably the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1902) who produced the first serial photographs of human and animals in motion."